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by au8er 617 days ago
Often times chirality is not just a fun quirk. For certain drugs, the left handed and the right handed versions can have completely different effects on the human body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_drugs#Drug_toxicity. To avoid making the wrong type of drug, a specific way of producing the chemical molecule has to be derived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantioselective_synthesis.
1 comments

And sometimes it doesn't change much at all except for the patent and withdrawal as with citalopram/escitalopram (generic Celexa/Lexapro).